The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 21, 1905, Page 5

THE 'SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. THE PRICE °F BEING BY HELEN elieve you are e had been @ 8 neck wit kn: his 4 nds , I was t 1 he is the captain’s spoke of ed that of life are we come 1 our very I know this »mecoming, is not ie thing to see. of the prison y name, and same re- all day long, , that e from the news- man of strange and the word will see you if irough with o wooden mean s0 we met in ch, if you windows, you 2 an mp and list- picture of brood- nd ratsed rge, prominent cal courtesy his hand, a a, of kept al nding a man med, stripped of his emotions had the past time nor dence of suffering looked shrunken, been, I&hould haz- man of the boule- office ange a ¢ as thbugh the from e that rained be- Eagging hered away from f a convalescent comes back to ark hair lay weak d clinging above the pallid, w. 1 wonde could po when tt mouth— of unrest: His hi: n o0 poignant that it like a det g mome . was a So all y on that I ere. All th re—n T all, I reas: sce me, s office was harder Even sick In e~not a standard ance of one who h ; the de penalty it o n will palliati or is not the m molution. ar from it It is me the m “take his medicine, squealing, ) to the g , or that degre.: heavy kn my he question caught my ow-being at s I wavered reporter—writer,” ng, searching for the ap- ed—that make t short half-hour in the cap- body and there was a certain manliness in his manliness of fine fiber and but the red if his clean- ssibly have looked hey were stubble- the loose, weak, raint—was drawn refined by grief evelids were w except him- g or long s eyes there was tears tongue. aining hand—how my mission and h a pass? it seemed like toward re- nt speaking in a voice that struggled for lance—and I per- does custom and by hand :nd foot. e from any news- Mr. have c:nsented to I have spoken to since that re interviews that were sent out ot interviews. I about my case. What here is nothing to it better—or sured myself, he had d 1 wonder yet for him or for me. in mind as he harsif, resentful s done wrong and re must, without no denial or de- excuse. spirit of high im- determination to he must, *“‘without and it i+ a mood that may reat iron gate of may not, for the ing Tax Collector is 2 man of strange, uncertain impulses that epring from strong currents in an un- disciplined nature. It was not of the fac s in the case—the dovetailed details of his wrongdoing— that he spoke to me. His attorney, Arch- Id Barnard, had warned him not to do this. The subject was tabooed, and so far interest in it goes 1 was satisfied. s the process of law to draw that 1 its own good time. of the struggle that went on in his as my mind—the warfare between the good and the evil in the man— willing to speak, jerkily, spasmodically, in invol- untary phrases like the ejaculations of idn't make up my mind to leave hie told me, ““until noon of the day on which I went aw Until that time here, 1 still had hopes of making good, but at last 1 saw I couldn't—that I had to get out. It whs in a way a relief to get away then, for no one can know what I suffered going around shaking hands with ved 1 -was—what 1 t me—the knowledge I was glad to get.away was nct of what 1'd done. from it, among sirangers. It was a ter- rible strain.” 3ut,” 1 asked him, * t ticket to return to Cal you had gone away?" at me with that eyes that had noth- ing to do th me nor with my question, only with his’ own corroding thoughts. “I was homesick. I wanted to come back. Oh, T knew very well what would happen when I got back; but I was homesick. You see, I'd always been home to dinner and to lunch—I was used to going home— I missed my friends and the people I e whole thing. You know how 1 1?7 You've been homesick, haven't you? ted to come home.” It is very hard to understand men, to unravel their motives. I wouldn't venture an opinion on whether he was talking to me for effect or merely talking to him- self. Smith, it seems to mé, is a weak, ain, fleshly man, willful without being will strong, to be easily beguiled by flat- to be lightly swerved by thé desire se of the moment. Perhaps in the desolation of his flight, = ha@inting fear of that tapping fin- er on his shoulder and of the words in Smith, 1 want you"—perhaps in the futility of flying from his own con- science he did yearn for home, he did séme wild, half-formed desire to back and lay his head in his ged wife's lap and implore forgive- ness and comfort. Who can tell? rC In such wayward natures as his there always the dramatic instinct. Did you know that your wife was “Yes; I'd read it in the morning paper— 1 had made up my mind to come ack before I knew that. I thought I might as well come back and pay the penalty—and have it done with.” Because you couldn't get away?”’ “Oh, 1 could have got away. I have no doubt about that. But there was no It seems hardly possible to me; You'rs not an inconspicuous man, nor one likely to be overlooked—" There was a.quick flash of the eyes, a quick, pleased, gratified flash. The old Smith of the gay days, the flattered, vain, debonair Smith, lived again for a brier moment—the frivolous succeptible Smith who spent his money with both hands for the sake of adulation, for the sake of be- ing called a “good fellow.” I had not meant it that way at all, not—heaven forefend—in flattery. 1 had only meant he seemed a man easily marked, not easily forgotten, and so, like- ly to be traced to the uttermost ends of the earth. The flash of folly died out, and he sank again into the apathy of his graver self. nd what,” I went on, * would-you have done if you had not been caught in St. Louis?" “I would have come back here.” “And-" “I would have gone home—first of "all.” “To your wife?” Fes, to my wife.” “Do you think you would have been recetved with kindness?"” “Yes,” and he turned his big eyes on me, red-lidded, unseeing, dimmed with tears, ‘es—I think—I would.” “And now that you have come back—" “I can't tell you what it has meant to me—what I have gone through—to come back like this—to have my friends (I'm surprised ‘that there have been sc many of them) come to me and shake hands and say ‘How d'ye do, E4?” and try to act as if there was.nothing the matter, to treat me the same as—Oh, I don’t want to talk about that.” He flung out an impatient hand. “But—your wife?” Yes?” 1 “You will see her soon?” “Yes—T will.” “Will she come Lere to-morrow? sce the afternoon papers say—' “Come HERE?” Something of the violence of undisciplined nature broke loose. ‘Come here! No—not if I never see her! Do you think I would let her see me here—like this—in prison?” “But—how eclse—" “I haven't committed a murder, i? I have the right to—" YW yes—to ball, of hadn’t thought of that.” had L “Well,” he asked, with a heavy sigh of reaction, “do you think I'd let her come HERE to see me—then?” “And you wili go home to her?” Of course.” What do you desire most of all— what do you wish for?” I put the aquestion with my own thoughts on a speedy trial, & prompt sentence, a short tern: of punishment—the settling of the whole unhappy affair as soon as possible. But my question did not I his have course. I Nor indeed touch that answering point in his mind. It cut farther and deeper, and ne said: “A clear conscience—-the thing I would like, to have most of all in this world is a clear conscience.” “But now,” I said, “that you are back—that the suspense is over and the inevitable happened—is your mind at peace “At peace?’ The pain in his eyes deepencd until thelr look was that of a dumb animal in mortal agony. He n't talking for effect now—if ever DARE: he had been. “MY mind at peace?” He shook his head slowly, hopelessly. "I shall never Lé at peace until' Im in my grave.” Tax Collector Edward J. Smith was a “gool fellow"—the b of “good fellows,” “according to ‘the loose and worldly standards of those who graded him, on whom he spent his stolen money —and this is the price he pays for it. Nay, this is only one instaliment of the price he pays for it, Until the very end—until that time when he says he shall be at peate again—there will be installments of the price to he paid. There will be his ruined home to contemplate, his heartbroken wife re- paying broken faith with tender loyal- ty, his little daughter with the shadow of his shame upon her innocent head. He has still the ordeal of the prisoners' . . . dock before him, and—but ‘these, of course, are problematical—the sen- tence, the prison stripes and prison fare and prison life, the lost years at San Quentin to face, and then, hardest of all, the return to the world, the struggle to build,a new lité on the ‘rulns of the old. It is not a new road that he has traveled nor an unheard of price that he must pay. It is all as old as—as old as man's wayward fancies and law- less desires. * It is not new even out at the City Hall. The whole poor, wretched story has been told—the wWhole hard lesson taught even to the bitter end, over and over again out there. There have been many “good fel-, lows” on the public moneys that the wonder is that the taxpa:ers have been able to pay for anything else besides\ the pleasures of these genial, free- handed spirits—and they've all gone the same way. " There was Treasurer Widber, who, it is true. was not a “good fellow” in the” low and roystering fashion of the others, But he was a “good fellow” to his own undoing nevertheless. - A man of good breeding and education, a U. C. man, with a high position to step into and maintain, a brilliant and secure- future to look forward to, he yet could not mark the line between that which was his own and that which was thé city's. Temptation came through family pride. There was a story that the holes in his father’s affairs needed stopping and that the son to save the father’s name borrowed—only . borrowed—the city’s money. There were other needs and more borrowings, for friends, for rel- atives, ‘for speculation to replace the missing funds, to make good the short- age of ‘a fellow official—for ona thing and another, until one .morning the whole city read over its morning cof- fee that $116,000 of the city’s funds had vanished into thin air and Treasurer ‘Widber was under arrest. = He had been a “good fellow,” with L] always a ready hand in a yielding friends who stood by him know where ‘pocket for those in a tight place—and —trying to piece together the frag- he paid the price. ' : _ments of a shattered life. A GOOD - FELLOW. supposed integrity. He had a charming family and had lived the humdrum, “blameless life a man must live under country town espionage if he would wear a good name. He came here presumably a *‘safe’’ man, immune to temptation, and was caught_in the maelstrom of the mid- night life. He lost his head, he lost his sense of decency, of proportion; he lost the Government money, some $65.000, and he lost his office and his libertn His friends, misled by the clear record of his O s LOVE the common people, and I'm not running for office, either. At least I love one of the common peo- ple. At the risk of appearing con- ceited I shall not mention his name. In spite of this fact my deep regard for the truth compels me to state a few plain truths about this same common ‘people. One of them is that for sheer, unmitigated, all-wool-and-a-yard-wide ingratitude this same common people can give cards and spades to any rank, unqualified despotism on the face of this earth and win in a romp. This fig- ure-is a trifle mixed, but you probably get the idea. Take the case of William Theodore Seltzer, for example. He was one of the best friends the cemmon people ever had—he admits it himself—and yet you all w what happened to him. I'm going to tell you about him anyway, so that it doesn’t make much difference whether - you know about him or not. It's much easier to be told things that you already know than to have some inky scribe take you by the hand and lead you into realms of thought hitherto untraversed by mortal man. ‘William Theodore was the first man who broke the news to the people that they were being oppressed and ground down by the heel of a ruthless tyranny I don’'t know just what the tyranny consisted -in; but then Willilam Theo- dore didn't quite know himself. It was enough to know that there was tyran- ny around somewhere. Having estab- lished this fact to his entire satisfac- tion, Wiilliam Theodore proceeded to lay his evidence before the common people. “Are you slaves or men?” he inquired in loud, strident tones, “that you allow the sculless minions of plu- tocracy to ride roughshod over you and to pollute the free air of America with low-grade, trust-made gasoline? How long will you permit fhdustrial anarchy and industrious alimony to run riot throughout the length and breadth of this tolerably long and broad land? Will you continue to sell your souls to a trust for a dollar a day, when you could easily ‘get a dollar and a half In an open market?” It so happened that William Theo- dore struck the country in a dull sea«~ son. There were only two or three wars in progress in different parts of the world, and these very small affairs, averaging not more than a couple of hundred casualties a day altogether. Therefore, the common people, who buy Penny papers and follow the course of all the murder trials with unflag- ging regularity, sat up and begfin to take notice when Willlam Theodore called upon them to rally round his banner and contribute to his campaign fund, for an important feature of his scheme for the freeing of his hative land ‘was that he himself should be sent to Congress<as soon as possible. ‘When he got there the people should soon see the trusts cringing at the feet of their master while he decided wheth- er to boil-them alive or cut their throats and bojl them afterward. The campaigp opened with an abun- dance of redfire and skyrockets, actual He went through ‘the crushing humilia- ' ‘There was Osca, M. Welburn, Collector | and'figurative, William Theodore sup- tion of his trial, his sentence, his impris- of Internal Revenue. He came here from a | plying the figurative kind. The trusts onment, and now he is—only the few country town, a . v 2 A ‘of middle age and ! laid low and said nothing. Meanwhile past, went on his bond, and he ran away, forfeiting his bonds. Then he came back, a private soldier in a volunteer regiment under a false name, and hoped to pass unobserved to the Philippines, but the sharp eyes of a negro efp e of his & covered him. and for We sake of the p: try reward upon his head deliv- ered him to justice. There are many loopholes in the law, sSome made by ingenuity, some by forgetful- ness, and through ong of waese he slipped and missed San Quentin. He went to the water front instead, to take up life again in his loneliness and old age and poverty and disgrace as a longshoreman. This was the price that Welburn paid— and he was a rare good fellow, so those who come out when the sun sinks low and the electricity flashes high will tell you. There was Dimmick of the Mint. His modest, frugal, suburban life left nothing to suspect until another, a luxurious phase, was uncovered. He, too, had been *a “good fellow” in a more restricted and disereeter way—and he is paying the usual price. There is Jack Chretien—"Happy"” Jack Chretien—save the mark!—the man whose warped principles were a byword, whose pame stands still a symbel of jovial, impudent dishomor. No one ate more freely or more openly of the for- bidden fruit of lfe: no man was more ostentatiously and riotously a “good fel- low” than he and, in a striped suit fur- nished by the State, he is paying the price, too. There is Peter McGlade, deputy in the County Clerk’s office, who resorted to his facility with ben and ink to increase his income because he wanted more of what he looked on as the good things of life than his salary could supply. He was a “good fellow,” too. The loudest laughing, the deepest drinking, the most lavish-spending of good fellows. He, too, is paying the price—there's a monotonous repetition of the price in cases like these. They all seem to come to the same thing. There’s Senator Bunkers, too—not a very large frog in the puddle, to be sure, yet still the price he must pay is a heavy one. They all—these “good fellows'—seem to live the same story and come to the same end. ~ “Is the game,” I asked Tax Collector Smith, “worth the candle?” He sat_with clasped hands and bowed head and said no word. “And yet heavy as the price is, it is the innocent who suffer most in the long run,” I half asked, half suggested to him, “the wife and children.” “Yes,” he said, “it s the innocent who suffer most.™ ; § Fables for the Foolish % the youthful champion of liberty and union, now and forever, one and in- separable, careered up and down the district, spréading hope of deliverance and great chunks of impassioned ora- tory wherever he went. “Send me to Congress,” he cried aloud, “and the country will be saved. Elect my op- ponent, and the great system of gov- ernment which the fathers—and, inci- dentally, the mothers—reared with such patient care will crumble into ruin.” The people having nothing else on their minds at the moment took Wil- liam Theodore ag his word and voted for him in large installments, two or three times apiece in some cases. When the returns were all in William was all to the good and the other fel- low was nowhere. Then did the suc- cessful candidade congratulate himself greatly and assure his constituents that for the pure, unadulterated es- sence of wisdom they had the werld beaten to a standstill. Then he packed his carpet bag and hied him to the city by the Potomac, where the laws of the nation are discussed and a few of them are passed. William Theodore assured himself that all was now plain ssiling. He had ‘the people behind him and the future wasg before. If he had only known it it would have been a whole lot safer for him to have had his fu- ture behind him and the people in front, where he could keep an eye on them. But where ignorance is bliss, it’s a rude awakening to be put wise. The new Congressman, not knowing all the ins and outs of the game, worked day and night In what he con- sidered were the interests of his con- stituents. When they besought him to secure a new postoffice for them and to appoint their sons to good places in the postoffice department, he re- buked them and inquired haughtily if they were not aware that there were issues of far greater importance be- fore the representatives of the peopls than pork barrels and appointments. Undoubtedly they had heard some- thing to that effect before, but it's possible to have an issue so big that no one takes any particular interest in it. But William Theodore labored onm, struggling manfully with the tyrant oppressor and making an average of four speeches a week, not to mention deliverances in the committee rooms and leave to print. He didn’t seem to make much of an impression on the enemy, but he consoled h If with the thought that he was tie friend of the people and that they would stand by him. .It is my sad duty to chronicle the tragic fact that the heroic friend of the people didn’t begin to know them. The shortness of their memory is mi- croscopic and the le:nn of th:ir in- titude is beyond the power of mor- mmm to n{lmne. vPVhen Willlams Theodore Seltzer announced his inten- tion of running for re-election he was surprised and pained to be told that the Tree and sovereign people had de- cided to nominate another man who would look after local interests better and that they didn’t care particularly for his brand of reform. William Theodore Seitzer retired to private life forthwith, considering the profound lesson that man's ingratitude to man finds its highest expression in the in- gratitude of the common people ‘toward those heroic souls who would fain save them from their op; Copyright, 1905, by Albert